ON LOCS, "RACE," AND TITLE VII

In its recent and important decision in EEOC v. Catastrophe Management Solutions interpreting and applying Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that an employer's grooming policy prohibiting the wearing of dreadlocks by and denying employment to Chastity Jones, a Black woman, was not racial discrimination under and within the meaning of the statute. In so holding the court, relying on mid-twentieth-century dictionary definitions, concluded that the Title VII term "race" refers to biological conceptions and not social constructions of that word. In addition, the court determined that locs are not an immutable racial characteristic subject to the statute's antidiscrimination mandate and protection. This essay critiques and rejects (1) the court's race-as-biology approach grounded in dictionaries reflecting centuries-old, pseudoscientific, and debunked understandings of the invention and myth of "race," and (2) the court's fundamentally flawed immutability analytic as applied to Black women's natural hair and, more specifically, locs in the workplace context. The article concludes that future court decisions addressing this subject should not rely on and replicate the Eleventh Circuit's impoverished interpretation of Title VII when determining the legality of employers' no-locs conformity commands.